Hi! Thank you so much to the people who reviewed last chapter and thanks to everyone who's following this story, I hope you're enjoying it. If it wasn't clear last chapter, Bella isn't driving her car because her belly is too big to fit comfortably in her Mini Cooper XD
Not mine.
Chapter 5
Edward was just walking into his home when his phone rang, he picked it up without looking at the screen.
"Bella?"
"No, it's Tanya."
"Oh. What do you want?"
"Well, hello to you too, darling."
"What is it, Tanya?"
"Who's Bella? Your girlfriend?"
"Uh huh, yup. She's 10 years younger than me and she laughs at all my jokes."
"Well, that's awesome, you should marry her."
"Did you call for a reason?"
"I didn't get the box."
"What do you mean, I sent it with an Uber."
"Well, nothing came here, and I really need it."
"Fine, I'll call customer service and ask them to send it again, what's the address?"
"I already gave it to you."
"Well, I lost it."
She rattled off the address again. Edward tried to remember if he had given Billy the address right in the beginning, most likely not since the box didn't make it to its destination but he would rather chop off his left nut than admit to Tanya of all people that he had done something wrong.
-PH-
"So, what are you gonna do?" Alice was so excited she was practically salivating. When Bella told her what she had done she sat down and asked her to recount every single detail. This was way better than manning the phones.
"I don't know, my mom's coming over tonight for dinner though."
"You should ask him to bring some of his stuff over, so it looks like you do live together." Bella hadn't thought of that, it made sense. She would ask Edward to do so when they spoke next, he still hadn't called.
"He's cute." Alice offered. "Like, really cute. You have to tell me when you check for quality control," she winked.
"Alice, there won't be any quality control check." Bella stated.
"Oh, c'mon Bella, you're so-"
"Knocked up."
"No, closed off." Alice corrected. "He seems like a nice guy, plus he has a great ass," she smiled.
In truth, Bella had to agree, she would have to be blind not to see how attractive Edward Cullen was, lion's mane notwithstanding. But the truth of the matter was Bella was due to give birth to another man's child in less than a month. Her life was about to change so drastically it made her head spin. She knew for the foreseeable future the only man in her life would be her son.
Plus, Edward Cullen kind of annoyed the shit out of her.
The ringing of her office phone took her out of her reverie, Alice left her office. "Thank you for calling Seattle Regional, this is Isabella Swan in credit lending, how may I help you?"
"Hey, it's me. Your husband."
She snorted. "You wish."
"Alright, let's get this started, put me on hold."
"Wait, before we start, I need you to bring some stuff to my place so my mom can see your things there. Grab a pen and some paper." He didn't "Bring pictures, underwear, and shirts. Think of an acronym so you can remember them." Bella was used to acronyms, in banking everything got shortened. "Think of…" she looked at the words in front of her "PUSH: pictures, underwear and shirts"
"And the H?"
"Home decorations, whatever else you can think of."
"Okay fine, can we get started?"
"Did you write it all down?"
"Yes, Bella c'mon I have limited time."
"Okay, fine, but please don't forget anything." After mumbling he wouldn't she placed him on hold and picked up after a few seconds, "was that it?" he let her know that was not the right jingle. One down, 247 to go.
-PH-
Angela had been trying to speak to Bella all afternoon to see if she had given any thought to her proposal but every time she tried her extension the line was busy. That was one of the things Angela liked most about Bella, she was such a hard worker.
She tried Bella's line one more time and again found it busy, oh well, she would ask her when she saw her.
-PH-
"Was that it?" Bella asked, she hoped it was because she didn't know how much longer she could do this, they had been doing this for hours and weren't even halfway through yet as she was forced to hang up every time an appointment came in. She was tired and her finger hurt from dialing all these damn numbers. What kind of composer couldn't get inspired anyway?
"No, try the next one."
She was just about to place him on hold again when she heard her name being called and hung up in a hurry. Alice was poking her head at her door.
They would have to start again "Ugh, Alice, you startled me."
"Sorry. Angela was looking for you though, she said she called you, but your phone was busy all afternoon. Y'know, it'd be faster if he just came here to do it."
"What do you mean?"
Eager to impart some knowledge, Alice sat down "All of the jingles for the bank are stored in the main K-Drive, all you have to do is press this little yellow button, put your officer code in and with the up and down arrows you can listen to all of them one by one, I do it all the time to change the hold music for my extension, there's some good songs in there."
Huh. That did sound much better than what they were currently having to do. She glanced at the wall clock and was shocked to see the time; the bank would be closing in 10 minutes. She would have to mention it to Edward later. No point in calling him again right now.
Bella thanked Alice for the tip and studiously ignored the devilish glint in her eyes when she asked her if she too, could come over for dinner.
-PH-
"Hi, yes, my name is Edward Cullen. I asked for a package to be delivered earlier today and it never arrived."
Edward was talking to Uber customer service and was told that the address he had provided was wrong so his box had been brought back to the office, after asking him if he would like to send it to a different address he said yes and rattled off Bella's address, they would deliver it as soon as they could. He would just bite the bullet and give Tanya the damn box himself. What the hell was in there that was so important anyway?
Bella had given him a lightning-fast tour when he got to her house, luckily her two-bedroom apartment wasn't very big and had an uncomplicated layout, so long as her mother didn't ask him to give her the tour himself and he showed her to the coat closet instead of the guest bathroom they should be just fine.
She was frantically moving around, taking things out of his overnight bag like a woman on a mission and asking him questions about himself to try and get to know him. She admitted to him that she had been a huge fan of Midnight Sun and was delighted to discover he had worked on the music for it. After hanging up his shirts and shoving his boxers in a drawer she moved on to his toiletries, he had remembered the H for "home decorations". He brought over some of his CDs and his iPod, it was old but filled with some of his favorite pieces of music, along with some songs that he had written himself and his latest work, he took the wireless Beats headphones he was wearing from around his neck and laid both items down on her nightstand.
"Okay, okay everything is put away, are we missing anything?" Bella asked almost breathlessly.
"How'd we meet?"
"At a Starbucks, we both ordered the same thing, and you took my drink by mistake, we got to talking afterwards and we hit things off."
"That's the oldest trick in the book." Jacob was lame.
"Well, it worked on me, I didn't know it."
"Did we have sex that same day?"
"My mother is not going to ask you that!" Bella said scandalized.
"Yeah, but did we, or didn't we?"
"No comment," she blushed.
"We did." Edward smirked. He was quite enjoying the sight of a flustered Ms. Swan.
"Moving on. My parents moved to London three years ago after my sister Kate married an English guy, his name is Garrett. My father and Garrett are both lawyers and Garrett found him a position over there that was too good to pass up. Their paperwork took forever to pull through though, that's why I didn't think my mom would come now. My father's name is Charlie, my mother's name is Renée, my sister Kate is older than me, she's been living in London for five years. My parents are originally from a small town north of here named Forks, they still have a house there but lived most of their adult life in Seattle. We lived in Arizona and Florida for a few years before settling down here." Edward's head was spinning; he had not caught a single thing she said.
"I'm never gonna be able to remember all that," he griped.
"I know, I know," Bella fretted "just smile and nod. Don't eat with your mouth open, don't place your elbows on the table and please do not mention-"
The doorbell rang and Bella seemed to forget she had been speaking to Edward.
Her veins were icy cold as she waddled toward the door.
Showtime.
-PH-
"Oh, how charming, it's much better than the flat you had right after college, but have you considered a better neighborhood, darling? You know Windmere and Westlake are much better options to raise a family in, lots of parks nearby, the houses are bigger too."
"We like it here." Bella muttered; it was always something with her mom.
"Well, maybe in the future then. Show me the baby's room!" She clapped excitedly.
Bella turned on her heel to lead them, her mother commented on the hallway decorations and Edward just walked behind her, aside from saying hello to Renée he had not spoken another word. It felt so weird to Bella to be sharing something so private with a complete stranger. No one but herself had seen her child's nursery.
When Bella first found out about her pregnancy she knew before even speaking to Jacob that she would be doing this on her own, she hadn't expected him to relocate to the other side of the country and sign away his parental rights as soon as he could, but she knew they wouldn't be raising this child as a couple. They were by no means in love, they had a fun time together and she felt comfortable enough to be intimate with him, she had been on the pill, so the baby was quite the surprise. Mainly for Bella it felt nice not to be alone.
She had only ever been in two relationships before: Jasper, her college sweetheart and the taker of her virginity and Jacob, the giant fucking dumbass who picked up women at Starbucks and impregnated them and then left them alone to sort out the mess.
Bella had gotten over Jacob abandoning her… for the most part.
Anyway, she could love her baby enough for two parents, he wouldn't even need a father.
Her own parents coming to accept that, however, was a different story.
"It's… cute. Animal themed, huh?" Renée asked, not quite trying so hard to hide her displeasure.
Bella closed her eyes to rein in her frustration.
Edward was beginning to understand why Bella held off on telling her mother about Jacob leaving for as long as she had, having spent just a short amount of time with the woman he had grown quite tired of her constant criticism, he had no doubt she loved her daughter dearly and was sure she meant her observations as positives, but he really wished she would stop. Edward could tell Bella had spent a fair amount of time decorating her child's nursery, the walls were painted in a pale yellow, there was a cherry wood crib against the wall, behind it was a mural of a tree with different little jungle animals hanging from the branches. Stuffed animals were scattered around, a rocking chair and changing table were on the other side. A bookcase was against the other wall filled with all kinds of baby books, in the middle of it was a small frame holding an ultrasound picture.
Shocking the hell out of himself but unable to stop, Edward stepped further into the room and stopped right behind Bella. "Play along," he whispered into her ear as he snaked his arms around her bump, he felt her sharp intake of breath. "We went with an animal theme because the baby moves a lot, we jokingly started calling it little monkey and it kinda stuck," he offered with a half-smile.
As if to prove his point, he felt a movement below his hand. Edward had never touched a pregnant belly before, he had no children of his own or siblings who may have given him nieces or nephews. He had always kind of been afraid of pregnancy, but he had to admit the feeling of Bella's baby apparently shifting positions beneath his palm was kind of fascinating to him.
Renée seemed mollified as she turned around and looked inside the baby's closet.
Bella spun around slowly to face Edward; she wasn't sure what to feel. Aside from herself, the medical staff at her check-ups, and her mother during lunch, no one had touched her belly and though the feeling of his hands on her was foreign she was surprised to find it wasn't necessarily unpleasant. "Thank you," she whispered to him.
"You're welcome," he answered, his arms resting on the low of her back.
"Darling? Sweetheart?" Bella snapped back to reality and stepped away from Edward's embrace to face her mom. "You two ready for dinner? You'll love what I brought! And I have a photo album so we can go through it afterwards but first I want to see photos of you two!"
Suddenly Edward remembered something: PUSH. Think of P for pictures.
He forgot about the pictures.
His panicked eyes met Bella's "Shit! I forgot the pictures at my house."
Renée narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean, your house?"
Hope you enjoyed, would really appreciate if you let me know what you think :)